Toraja Airport, which opened in September last year, is located in Tana Toraja regency and can accommodate some 45,000 passengers a year. Developers had to flatten three hills to build the Rp 800 billion (US$55.49 million) facility in the mountainous region.

Pantar Airport is located in Alor regency at the outermost part of East Nusa Tenggara (NTT) province, bordering East Timor. The facility can accommodate around 35,000 passengers a year.

“We hope these two new airports can be used to spur economic growth in the regions, create more jobs and trigger new economic centers,” President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo said during a virtual inauguration on Thursday.

The inauguration came at a time when fewer Indonesians were boarding airplanes as a result of the government’s COVID-19 mobility restrictions, which caused the number of domestic flight passengers to fall 62.88 percent year-on-year (yoy) to 2.34 million in January, according to data from Statistics Indonesia (BPS).

Read also: Outlook 2021: Tourism recovery banks on outdoor recreation, domestic market 

Toraja Airport is expected to lure tourists from Bali, Jakarta and West Java, among other Indonesian regions outside of South Sulawesi, especially as Indonesia’s tourism industry has been banking on domestic tourists to stay afloat ever since foreign tourist arrivals dropped to a decade low in March last year.

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